ArcaMax

My dad died at 49. I was 23.

He never wanted me to work with my hands. I've spent most of my patchwork of a career working with my mind. I'm not sure either side gets away without scars. It's perhaps a conversation we could have had over a beer. I never did have a beer and a conversation with him. It might have been more honest.

But death stretched out a veil of honesty over the conversations at the end. Church was a forest or a river where you could fly fish. It wasn't in cold stone or stained ceiling tiles.

Maybe over a beer we could have been more honest about his whys. He joined the military to get out of poverty. He said most of his buddies got addicted or went to jail. He chased technology but maybe didn't have all the opportunities to use it. He may have felt anger about the disconnect between who he was and who he wanted to be.

A friend of mine shyly asked me during a recent road trip if I ever felt angry about the death of my dad. She shared that she had a moment of knowing that her father, who had passed more recently, would have understood one of her children more. The thought made her furious.

Time has been too long for it to be fury, but resignation. My son on the ride home from school told me that he needed some things for his ofrenda at school, the altar built for Dia de los Muertos on Nov. 2. I asked if he was going to put up a picture of our old dog, as his sister had.

He said yes and paused. "I'm sorry, it's just that I don't know what your dad would have liked."

I replied, "It's okay, bud. I can tell you about him ... but I think he would have liked you."

The chessboard my son started on was from my dad, bought in Tijuana on a whim, I think maybe even before I was born. His echoes remain, especially when the veil is thin, like now, for various holidays and remembrances.

My daughter wanted to enter a Veterans Day contest; she wanted to draw my dad and asked if I had a picture I liked of him. I knew the one immediately and asked my mom for it. My dad had been an F-16 mechanic for most of his career, but once he was allowed to get into a cockpit for a picture.

As I brought it back from my mom, my husband took it and soberly looked at the photo. "You look like him," he said.

I know, but I feel it in my expressions more. The way my mouth becomes a line not to cross during moments of exasperation. The exaggeration of facial muscles to complement sarcasm. They are learned grooves my face falls into, but only a few people recognize what wore them into my character. Unfortunately, it's not my husband, who never got the chance to meet my dad.

My husband told me a while back he didn't realize what the death of my father might have meant to me until our daughter got older. He met me two years out from the death of my father, mostly mopping up the feelings inside before they liquefied on my cheeks. Mostly.

The tears have dried now.

There are a few of us in the Dead Dads Club; our experiences differ depending on our relationships, our ages then, our ages now, and the mummified age that our dads will stay. It's sometimes low anger, low curiosity, low regret that stalks us, but it's a club where love prints us our membership card to a place where we can see them only from afar, and through the veil of time.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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